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Mock Turkey Soup

A soup made from calf's head, beef, veal, root vegetables, herbs, ham or anchovies, and thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Mock Turkey Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Scald the head of the calf without skinning it.

  2. Boil the head for 30 minutes, then cut it into small square pieces.

Make the soup

  1. In a stew‑pan, combine the pieces with a strong broth made from beef, veal, turnips, carrots, onions, and celery.

  2. After stewing, add sweet herbs, sage, ham or anchovies.

  3. Boil until the head is tender, then strain through a fine sieve.

  4. Season the soup with salt, white pepper, cayenne, Madeira wine, and lemon juice.

  5. Thicken with flour and butter.

Finish and serve

  1. Add a cleaned part of the head, forced meat, and egg balls.

  2. Boil for a few minutes and serve.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + sagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together723 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Calf's head
Provides gelatin and body, giving the soup a rich, full texture as it cooks.
Gravy beef
Builds the savoury flavour of the strong broth that the soup is made from.
Flour
Thickens the strained soup together with butter, giving it a smooth, heavier body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and combines with flour to thicken the soup smoothly.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked into the butter and stirred into the hot soup without lumps, because raw flour clumps and tastes floury if it is not evenly dispersed and heated.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, turnip, carrot, onion, celery, ham):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, turnip, carrot, onion, celery, ham. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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